c. 1996 Religion News Service

(Rabbi Rudin is the national interreligious affairs director of the American Jewish Committee.)

(RNS)-It took 350 years, but Vatican authorities, with prodding from Pope John Paul II, have finally admitted the Inquisition “committed an objective error” in 1633 when it forced the astronomer Galileo Galilei to repudiate his “heretical” teachings, chief among them that the Earth revolves around the sun.

Now is also the time for the Amsterdam Jewish community to revoke the ban of excommunication it lay upon the philosopher Baruch Spinoza in 1656 for his “evil opinions” and “abominable heresies,” including his assertions that supernatural events could not occur, the Bible must be viewed as a human document, and that there is no immortality of the soul.

Both cases are painful reminders of how 17th-century religious communities, Christian and Jewish, punished some of their best and brightest members because they presented threatening critiques of the conventional beliefs of the time.

The Italian Catholic, through his telescopes and studies of motion, force and dynamics, dramatically challenged certain biblical passages about the order of the universe. And the Dutch Jew, by denying Mosaic authorship of Scripture and asserting that God exists only philosophically, was believed by his contemporaries to have endangered the spiritual well-being of his fellow Jews.

Indeed, both men believed that God is revealed through the works of the universe and that the true book of divine revelation is not the Bible, but the “Book of Nature.”

The two “heretics” also responded to their ecclesiastical punishments in similar ways. The Inquisition literally forced Galileo to his knees when he was 69 years old. He lived the last nine years of his life in seclusion, still writing and conducting scientific experiments.

Spinoza, whose father had fled the Inquisition in Portugal for freedom in Amsterdam, was 24 at the time of his excommunication. He lived the rest of his life in quiet simplicity as a lens grinder, writing and discussing philosophy. Although many of Spinoza’s books were officially banned, they were, of course, read everywhere.

Spinoza was offered the chair of philosophy at the University of Heidelberg if he would agree not to disturb the established religion. Not surprisingly, he declined the offer. After his excommunication, he belonged to no religious group. He died of tuberculosis at age 44.

Despite the efforts of the Inquisition and the Amsterdam Jewish community to squelch the teachings of Galileo and Spinoza, the two decisively changed our world.

The astronomer’s pioneering studies of falling bodies and motion, along with his discoveries about Jupiter, the moon, sun spots and a host of other significant achievements, directly influenced later scientific thinkers such as Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein.

The philosopher’s relentless criticism of traditional religion and the Bible, and his absolute reliance upon rational scientific reasoning as the sole means of finding truth and salvation, have had considerable impact on modern Christian and Jewish thought. Many religious thinkers see Spinoza as the first modern universalist and the philosophical parent of the secular world.

Spinoza believed that all existence, all nature, is God. Human happiness, he believed, comes when we arrive at this understanding, which enables us to conquer the passions, angers and jealousies that have held us in bondage. True salvation is to know that everything is in God; nature and God are in logical order and nothing can be different than it is. No wonder Spinoza was called “God-intoxicated.”

David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister and an avid student of philosophy, was so attracted to Spinoza’s thought that he recommended the excommunication be repealed. But the prime minister’s appeal was rejected by the Amsterdam Jewish community and the ban remains in force.

During their lifetimes, neither Galileo nor Spinoza was intellectually or spiritually destroyed by the “error” of the Inquisition or the “harshness” of the Amsterdam Jewish community. They continued their creative labors until they died.

Galileo’s place in history is so secure it did not need an acknowledgment of error from the Vatican. It is the Vatican that needed to admit its mistake in order to strengthen its own integrity.

And Spinoza, in life or in death, needs no repeal of his excommunication to insure his greatness. Rather, it is the spiritual heirs of the Amsterdam Jewish community who must make amends for what happened 340 years ago. It is never too late to do good.

MJP END RUDIN